New Zeland adventure begins: Coromandel and Auckland

I’m off again!  This time starting from Wahekie and traveling all around New Zeeland.  Ashlie’s big trip around both the north and south islands got delayed but I still thought I was going to catch up with her in the beginning of May.   But, surprise!  My boss told me that there wasn’t much work to do on the vineyard (weeding, bending pegs back into shape and what not) so I got to start my holiday in April on Good Friday with Ashlie.  

We spent Ashlie’s last night in Waiheke at Sarah’s house.  I had never been inside of Sarah’s house before, just driven up and hopped in her car to go wine tasting.  He house was cute.  A little one room place, on the beginning of a dirt road.  The house is situated in between a field and forest.  Just perfectly serene and furnished elegantly.  

She had started dinner before she picked us up, but needed to do a few finishing touches before it got popped in the oven.  So we chatted and drank wine.  Dinner was ready quite late, but nobody was in a rush so it was fine.  She had made cottage pie and peas.  A classic English dinner, or so I’m told.  Her friend Hilton had shown up last minute to join us for dinner so we had a full table.  We, of coarse, had more wine and more conversation and stayed up much too late.  But how can you say goodnight when you leave in the morning?  

In the morning we did get up and made breakfast.  Well I half made breakfast and Sarah half made breakfast.  We had bacon eggs and toast!  Best way to eat before we go on ultra budgets.  We had to catch the Orapiu ferry around 9:50.  It arrived in Coromandel at noon.   There were a few people waiting and only a few people on the ferry as well.  The ride over was beautiful, but I still got a little sea sick.  When we got to Coromandel the ferry supplied a complementary bus to town and a very informative lady that told us all the tour options available.  There was defiantly more luggage than people.  So we had two buses and a luggage trolley.  

Ashlie and I didn’t think anything of the holiday weekend, but maybe we should have.   It’s one of the last traveling long weekends before winter, so lots of things were booked.  We were lucky to get a car rented in Coromandel and were able to see the peninsula that way.  It was a fabulous idea to have a car.  So many places in New Zealand just aren’t accessible by public transport.  Also Ashlie loved driving again.  I don’t really care to drive.  I would much rather have a motorcycle or a scooter any day over a car.  Also driving on the opposite side of the road might not work out so much.  I swear that when Ashlie was driving she kept trying to put me in the ditch, but I think that was just her and me being unused to driving on the left side of the road.  

Before we got the rent a car we decided to go to the grocery store and stock up on food, so we wouldn’t have to eat out.  So we entered, looking ridiculous with our towering backpacks, and meandered around the narrow aisles.  I found Tuna and crackers for about $3 and Ashlie found a crab salad for about $7.  We are going to have to work on budgeting.  We both want to only spend about $1,500 for 6 weeks of travel.  For that we are going to have to eat cheap, and try to wwoof and couchsurf as much as we can.

The car was great but there were no tunes.  The local radio station was all commercials and static.  It wasn’t the best situation.  The roads all around Coromanel were super windy.  So much I got car sick.  I’ve learned to deal over the years.  Traveling back and forth to Michigan and downstate NY has taught me how to just ignore it or distract myself.  We already had an agenda.  We knew if we left just then we would be able to make it to hot water beach at low tide.  This is the ideal time to visit because you can make yourself a hot tub out of sand.  

We got there with plenty of time to spare.  I had to grab a few things out of my bag and found a stowaway.  There was a fish in the front pocket of my bag!  Someone much have put it in there when I put my backpack down (ontop of the bait cooler) at the gas station.  I was happy it was still frozen when we got to the beach, otherwise I would have had a stinky mess on my hands.  

Hot water beach, I think, was over hyped.  We got there and found the spot on the beach easily.  There were tons of people there, digging holes and hanging around.  I thought there were way too many people.  The hot water spring only came up in a very small area of the beach.  For some reason I thought it would be quite a big strip of sand we could all leisurely build hot tubs.  .  Ashlie and I really had no chance of getting a hole for ourselves.  For one, we didn’t have a shovel and for two (can you say that?), everyone was hogging the space where you could make one.  Some of the water was super hot; hot enough to burn you.  In the end we sat for a few minutes in a vacated luke warm pool.  Hey!  Something is better than nothing.

The next stop on our agenda was Cathedral Cove.  It was pretty close to hot water beach, so we drove on over.  It took about 45 minutes to hike down to the beach and it was beautiful.  Ashlie was expecting crystal blue waters, but a storm had just passed through and everything was a bit murky.  It was ok, we weren’t snorkeling anyway.  It was a bit chilly.  I could have spent all day there, but we wanted to find a hostel before dark, so we only stayed for about a half hour.    

The next day we found a different road to travel.  The 309 road was almost all gravel.  It had one way bridges all over it and was pretty twisty.  Ashlie took it slow and eventually we found a waterfall just off the road.  It was pretty cool. That was the main reason we took the road in the first place.  I saw the waterfall on the map and off we went.

 Ashlie wanted to see some gold mines and we knew that Thames was famous for them.  It took us over an hour to get there and when we arrived at the museum we were just in time for the tour.  Everyone had to wear hard hats because we went into the old mining tunnels.  The tunnels were so cool and they were just my size.  The miners tried to make them as small as possible, and I can imagine why.  Who wants to chip away extra rock if you don’t need to?  Mining the gold is hard enough as it is.

Thames was originally orchards cared for by the Maori people in the area.  They knew that there was gold on the their land, but didn’t want to exploit it because they saw what happened in other places where gold was discovered; sprawling unattractive cities, taverns and rough people in general.    Eventually the locals rented out the land to be used for mining and Thames grew to be the second largest town in New Zealand.

The gold here is found in quartz veins that run all throughout the land.  It was forced there by volcanic eruptions millions of years ago.  Apparently quarts and gold being found together is quite common.  Of coarse if gold and quartz are melded together you have to problem of extracting the gold.  The first thing you have to do is crush the quarts into a fine powder with a stamp battery.  Then water is added to the powder and the gold/quartz mud is spread over copper tables lined with mercury, which could extract the gold out of the mixture.  It seems like a lot for work to me, and a bit dangerous.  Especially when dealing with mercury.

The whole tour was pretty cool.  The museum is part of a historic society that is trying to restore the mine to it’s original state.  So they are making their own replica of the stamp battery and have much of the other historical artifacts in working order in the museum.

We took the Thames coastal road back to Coromandel to return the rent-a-car.  The coast is beautiful.  After we returned the car we had about four hours until the ferry arrived to take us to Auckland.  So we looked for the smoked mussel restaurant people had told us to visit.  It was wonderful!  They had smoked everything; snapper, king fish, garlic mussels, habinero mussels and just about every other kind you can think of.   They were a tad bit expensive, so I only got a little and supplemented the rest of my lunch form the bakery, a meat pie. 

The ferry was pretty uneventful, although Ashlie did get all teary eyed when we went past Waiheke for the last time.  In Auckland my friend Kate (another Jejuite) was letting us stay with her.  We tried to take the train out to her place, but it was closed for the holiday.  I just thought that was weird.  We met Kate at the bus stop and then she showed us the best hospitality.  We had wine and a vegetarian stir-fry that was to die for.  The conversation lasted all night as well.  I loved seeing her again, we had so much to catch up on and she was helping us plan the next leg of the trip.